| This dissertation is an exploration of the thesis that the construction of an African American ecological theology and activism can only emerge from understanding where African Americans already are connected intimately with animals, plants and other non human nature. The study argues that, while “back to nature” is the basic premise of mainstream ecological thought and activism, African Americans never left nature only to return to it in the same way as white Americans. A shift from being natural to being unnatural is proposed as a more adequate way to name the imbalance, distortion and destruction that changed the relationship between the ancestors of African Americans and nature. The first two chapters deconstruct the varying methods of mainstream ecological analysis, including ecological theology, ecofeminism, environmental engineering and psychology. Chapters Three and Four reconstruct the use and implications of black women's literature in the works of Delores S. Williams, Katie Cannon and Karen Baker-Fletcher, then expands upon womanist theological method for constructing a womanist ecological theology. Chapters Five and Six move toward a constructive vision of African Americans and nature derived from the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker and Margaret Walker. A view of black history as an African American environmental history is examined in historical and fictional representations of rape and lynching. Various strands of the philosophical theology of Paul Tillich, the hermeneutic constructs of Paul Ricoeur, the radical empiricism of Nancy Frankenberry and the religious and cultural criticism of Victor Anderson are appropriated in the analysis. In the conclusion, the principles of reflexive consciousness, radical monotheism and healing are proposed as central themes on which a womanist ecological theology must be constructed. This dissertation establishes the hermeneutical method for construing a more substantive womanist ecological theology. |
